I bought an IR Sensor rotary kit from Creatron to do this. See the below link to see the sensors. It is basically an IR emitter and sensor put adjacent to each other. When the sensor is looping, it returns zeros when the sensor detects a signal from the emitter, and returns ones when the sensor is interrupted.

The IR sensor can therefore detect whether it is being interrupted by the spokes of a turning wheel. By sampling the 0s and 1s over a set period of time, and determining the geometry of the spokes and wheels (e.g., 20 spokes per one rotation of wheel) one can calculate the amount that the wheel has turned over a set period of time. This value can then be converted into rotations per minute, which can be then converted into speed (speed = distance / time) by calculating the circumference of wheel.

For the Daily Device Project I built a car. But that wasn’t my idea at beginning, I changed it twice, from elevator to crane and then finally to a car, I explained the development of this project in the video below.

Circuit

Parts

The transistor works as valve, it can control how much power will pas trough, with the help of the Arduino it will control your motor. Basically your code is giving the order and the transistor is doing it. The information being sent by the button and the potentiometer is being read by the Arduino and then sent to the motors trough the Transistor. The transistor has 3 pins, the first one (with the chair facing you) will be connected to your Arduino, it must be one of the pins with ~ symbol. In this connection,between the transistor and the Arduino put a 2.2k ohm resistor. The second pin will be connected to the negative of your motor, remember to put a diode between your motor and the transistor, the energy coming from the motor may damage your board. The third pin is connected to ground.

To control the back and forth of the motors use Voltage inverter. It has for inputs for cable, the first two you connect to the positive and negative of your motor. The other two, one you connect to the 5v, and the other one you connect to the second pin of the transistor, is trough this pin that the motor will be controlled by the Arduino.

To control the start and stop you use the buttons, it has 4 pins, 1 will be connected to 5v, the other to ground, and the pin across from your ground connection will be connected to the Arduino. Between the ground and the button put the 10k ohm resistor.

The speed will be defined by the potentiometer, it has 3 pins, middle one will be connected to your Arduino using one of the analog pins. The other two is for ground and 5v.

Sprite : a computer graphic that may be moved on-screen and otherwise manipulated as a single entity.

My story is that I wanted to have an 8×8 LED Matrix used to mimic the display beside street lights indicating to pedestrians to either walk or stop. To begin to replicate this, the purpose of my process was to test the ability to control all 64 LED’s of this matrix to display my choice of a sprite. Starting simple, I wanted to create two sprite symbols, an “X” and an “O” to represent the 2 states that this display will show.

Materials List

– Arduino Uno

– 16 pin 8×8 LED Matrix

– Breadboard

– Jumper wires

– 1k ohm resistors (8)

– Lots of patience

Discovery

At first, working with these LED’s in a matrix seemed overly complicated and frustrating if your research isn’t thorough. However, after just a little practice, the matrix became “a little” less complex. The primary thing to notice is wether you are using a common cathode or common anode matrix.

What is the difference between Common Anode and Common Cathode?

• Using seven segment displays as an example, when all the anodes are connected to one point, it becomes a common anode. Common cathode means that all the seven cathodes of a 7-segment display are connected together.

• To function, a positive voltage should be supplied to the common anode and the common cathode should be grounded.

The next thing I did was test the lights to understand how these diodes were mapped to their pins. My trial and error resulted in one diode getting burned out accidentally missing a resistor on one of the connections. Luckily, the matrix continues to function with the remaining lights.

Long story short, understanding that the matrix works by a system of rows and columns, was key. A datasheet is what provided this understanding. However, this understanding still wasn’t enough as there seemed to be inconsistencies trying to simply isolate one LED with the code.

The fact of this matrix being able to show both red and green, may have bearing on me isolating one light. But throughout the testing, I have only been able to show red. Further research showed that I may have been better off with a shift register added to the circuit.

I built a vacuum cleaner breaking a hair dryer apart. Their mechanism is quite similar if you ignore the heating process of the hair dryer. One is the reverse of the other.

I picked a bottle that would match the size of the fan and bought two 9V batteries with battery clips so the switch function would be solved. A baby wipe has been used for the filter. I drilled the lid and cut a plastic piece from my sports equipment for the hose.

While doing some research for the project, I also found out that in the 1920s, women dried their hair by connecting a hose to the exhaust of their vacuum cleaners…

Our washing machine at home seemed so uninteresting so I decided to choose that for analyzing in hope of making it a bit more interesting.

I set up camp in the bathroom with lights, camera and not a whole lot of action.

I did though, I think, figure out how the machine’s different knobs, buttons and LEDs work with one another and also how it puts the machine to work. I put together a sort-of combination of a UI and user flow for an example setting of the washing machine.

For the “make-an-inspired-copy-protoype” part of the assignment, I deviated from actuators working with water and found in the 5V fan a similar trait; a spin.

So I decided to put a spin on things (pun à la Andrew Hicks intended) and thought how I could put together an interesting concept based on the washing machine but with a twist (pun, again).

At Hvíta húsið, a wonderful advertising agency I worked for from 2012 – 2015, they tried their hand at an open office space. I for one am all for increased transparency and collaboration between co-workers. That I was put smack-in-the middle of the open work area was perhaps not as ideal – for me at least.

The new situation also didn’t do so well with efficient AC during the warm summers.

So despite my attempts at getting people to voice their dialogue with team members by walking over to them instead of shouting across the room – and in the same moment, me – I thought of AC powered by silence setting for the air conditioning systems at one’s work place.

So an example would be a super warm Tuesday, the new AC is doing great and everybody’s working on their projects within decent noise levels. Then, around 10:30am, the workplace starts to get noisier and louder, slowly turning off the AC (given that it has the above setting turned on).

The noisy chatter would then flow into conversations of “Oh, my! How warm it is! Isn’t the AC working?” and “I know, right?! I’m sweating like a pig!” to which one could respond with “The AC is perfectly fine. It’s just waiting for the sweet silence”.

I’m aware that this concept might come off as a bit bitter from my end. Don’t get me wrong, from time to time I sure like a break from projects to do other, louder stuff. Maybe just not where people are trying to continue on with their own projects in peace.

Elevators are “thinking” machines, determining which floor to move to next based on their previous movement (in simple form).

Basic movement steps:

From Idle, wait for a button to be pressed

Move in the direction of the first button pressed (if you’re on floor 1 and floor 2 is pressed, move up; if you’re on floor 10 and floor 9 is pressed, move down)

After opening and closing doors, check to see if another button is pressed. If not, return to idle state.

Determine direction and move: If you were previously going up and a button for a higher floor is pressed, keep moving up. If you were previously going down and a button for a lower floor is pressed, keep moving down. If a button is pressed from the opposite direction – and there are no other buttons pressed for the current direction – switch and move in the new direction.